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[German Version] (May 5, 1916, Wiesbaden – Aug 14, 1988, Erlangen), Protestant jurist. He served as an officer from the first days of the war. After 1945 he studied and completed his professional qualification, and then practiced as a lawyer for several years in state and church administration. In 1958 he gained his Habilitation. From 1960 until his retirement in 1984 he was full professor of public law and church law in Erlangen. Obermayer was one of the pioneers of administrative law founded on the rule of law, informed by basic rights and in co…

[German Version] (July 9,1860, Essen – Nov 30, 1928, Erlangen), Protestant legal scholar. After associate professorships in Leipzig and Kiel, he was appointed to a full professorship in Erlangen in 1888. After numerous works on other legal topics, he devoted himself primarily to marriage law and church law, which he discussed without “any religious or theological consideration.” His monumental magnum opus, an edition of the Protestant church orders of the Reformation period (5 vols., 1902–1913; continued after 1951 by the Kirchenrechtliches Institut of t…

[German Version] The Prussian Civil Code ( Preußisches Allgemeines Landrecht) went into effect on Jun 1, 1794, as a law code for the unified Prussian monarchy. It was drafted at the behest of Frederick the Great by the new chancellor, Casimir v. Carmer (1780); among those contributing to its content, Carl Gottlieb Svarez and Ernst Ferdinand Klein stand out. Completed in 1791, after Frederick’s death, it was to have taken effect in 1792 as the Allgemeines Gesetzbuch für die Preußischen Staaten [Civil code for the Prussian states]. Not least in reaction to the French Revoluti…

[German Version] The expressions ius in sacra and ius circa sacra came into use in the 17th century but were not clearly distinguished until the 19th century. They denote the legal authority of the territorial ruler by virtue of his supervisory authority over all corporations and religious bodies (Secular supremacy: ius in sacra), grounded in his secular authority, and his authority as summepiscopus (Summepiscopate of the princes) of the Protestant church ( ius in sacris). Episcopalist theology (Episcopalism: I) developed a graduated theory of secular authority, in co…

[German Version] (Jan 27, 1701, Trier – Sep 2, 1790, Montquintin Castle, Luxemburg), Catholic historian and canonist. Hontheim was from a patrician family in Trier. He studied law, theology and classical philology in Trier, Leuven and Leiden. He received the Dr.iur.utr. in 1724 and became a priest and canonist in 1728, first in Trier then in Coblenz in 1740. He was professor of Roman law in Trier (1733–1738), administrator of the diocesan court in Coblenz (1738) and auxiliary bishop and pro-chancellor of the University in Trier (1748). Despite ecclesial and political success in th…

[German Version] Territorialism is a theory of the legal relationship between the state and the church, according to which the all-embracing sovereignty of the prince includes sovereignty over the church and the public practice of religion in his territory; this means that all leadership authority in the church derives from the territorial lord. Chronologically the territorial system gradually gave way to episcopalism (which was influenced increasingly by territorialist arguments as it emerged); i…

[German Version] refers to the division of the Reichstag according to religious parties ( Corpus Catholicorum and Corpus Evangelicorum ) when one side declared the question at issue to be a matter of religion. Deliberations then began first within the confessional blocks – separated according to curias. If these separately reached decisions differed from one another, only the path of compromise, the amicabilis compositio remained. Matters of religion could not, therefore, be decided in a plenary session according to the majority principle. Exercised de facto as early as 1526, b…

[German Version] refers to the right under imperial law to emigrate for religious reasons. The Peace of Augsburg (1555) guaranteed the estates of the empire the ¶ ius reformandi , i.e. the authority to determine the confession of their territory (religious ban). Subjects of other confessions were granted as a legal benefit ( beneficium) a qualified right to emigrate (i.e. taking along family and belongings) to a territory of their confession – and, therewith, the first constitutionally guaranteed basic right. The Peace of Westphalia confirmed this…

[German Version] 1. History. The concept originated in the rational Enlightenment doctrine of natural law (IV), and especially in the state-church law theory of collegialism. “Religious societies” is thus a short formula for the outside view of the churches, and later of all religious confessional societies from the vantage point of the religiously neutral state, which no longer concerns itself with the issue of religious truth and is therefore committed in principle to equal treatment. It was in this form that the concept found its way via the Prussian Civil Code, the Paulskirchenverf…

[German Version] (Apr 23, 1893, Frankfurt am Main – Feb 22, 1976, Erlangen) was a Protestant historian of law, and lectured in state and canon law. After studies in Freiburg im Breisgau and Halle, and military service from 1914 to 1918, Liermann gained his Habilitation in Freiburg in 1926. Initially appointed associate professor in 1929, he held a chair in Erlangen from 1931 to 1961. In addition to numerous works on the history of law, Liermann exerted a formative influence particularly through his textbook on canon law of 1933. He summar…

[German Version] (religious name Philipp; Nov 7, 1744, Budenheim, near Mainz – Aug 20, 1808, Düsseldorf), theologian and canonist. Hedderich became a Minorite in 1759. From 1774 to 1794 he was professor of canon law in Bonn; from 1803 on he taught at the Rechtsakademie in Düsseldorf. While he was studying law at Trier, he was decisively influenced by the personality and work of J.N. v. Hontheim. As a canonist, he was one of the most influential theoreticians of Febronianism. Hedderich emphasized t…

[German Version] ( appel comme d’abus) is an appeal of civil authorities against an abuse of power by an ecclesiastical authority transgressing the boundaries drawn by civil law; it was thus (along with the placet) a particularly effective instrument of secular supremacy. It achieved its distinctive form in France in 1539, when it served primarily as a defense against encroachments on Gallican liberties (Gallicanism). The French model also inspired its use in Spain and the Netherlands. Initially legal title was vested in royal church advocacy (Church advocate). The recursus came in…

[German Version] (Aug 31, 1904, Wülfrath – Nov 29, 1976, Göttingen), teacher of constitutional and administrative law. After studying in Marburg, Berlin, and Bonn (doctorate under C. Schmitt), Weber entered the Prussian ministry of education and cultural affairs, initially in the religious division, later in the division for national culture. In addition he was appointed lecturer at the Berlin School of Commerce in 1931 and promoted ¶ to full professor in 1935. In 1942 he became a professor at Leipzig and in 1949 at Göttingen, where he served as rector from 195…

[German Version] ( ius exclusivae) denotes the right of a civil ruler or state in Catholic church law to exclude as undesirable a certain candidate from being elected or appointed to church office. Papal exclusion, which the sovereigns of major Catholic powers (German and – later – Austrian emperors, kings of France and Spain) claimed for themselves with no formal recognition by th…

[German Version] The term state religion denotes a religious element unifying the collectivity of subjects, considered indispensable for the existence of the state (“un roi, une loi, une foi”). It was taken for granted as the foundation of nearly every early form of the state. To the extent that religion is considered an element of public order, religious pluralism is perceived as a threat to the unity of the state, since it bears the seed of civil war, or at least qualified loyalty on the part of th…

[German Version] refers to modalities of the medieval and modern Catholic claim to ecclesial (and esp. papal) authority in temporal (worldly) matters ( in temporalibus). Invoking older doctrinal tra-¶ ditions, the medieval papacy in particular claimed papal supremacy over all secular powers (most strongly articulated in the Unam sanctam bull of Boniface VIII [1302], doctrine of the two swords), and thus not only the supreme legislative authority in spiritualibus et temporalibus but also a right to intervene directly in the legal order of states through the repeali…

[German Version] was a movement for the reform of ecclesiastical policy and regional church law in 18th-century Germany, in which episcopalian (Episcopalism: II) and national church ideas combined to form an explosive mixture. It owes its name to a book written by the suffragan bishop of Trier J.N.v. Hontheim (1701–1790), De statu Ecclesiae et legitima potestate Romani Pontificis…, which appeared in 1763 under the pseudonym Justinus Febronius. Following a selective reduction of its contents, the book became the agenda of Febronianism. Hontheim's objec…

[German Version] 1. Joachim (May, 1544, Pyritz, Pomerania [now Pyrzyce, Poland] – Jan 14, 1623, Greifswald). Initially (1572) professor of mathematics in Greifswald, in 1578 he was appointed professor of law, a member of the ducal council, and president of the consistory. With his younger brother Matthias (2. below), he was a leading advocate of the episcopal system (Episcopalism: I), appealing to imperial law to legitimate the evolving Pro­testant system of placing church governance in the hands of…

[German Version] (Bodinus; 1529 or 1530, Angers – 1596, Laon) was a Carmelite for a brief period; he studied law in Toulouse from 1550 and became an advocate at the Parliament of Paris in 1561. In 1571, he entered the service of the Duke of Alençon and made contact with the “Politiques,” a group of moderate Catholics and Protestants who regarded the state as h…

[German Version] The summepiscopate of the princes is a 19th-century term for the governance of the Protestant churches, but its roots go back to the 16th century. After the breakdown of episcopal jurisdiction, with the approval of the Reformers the Protestant estates of the Empire set about restructuring the governance of the church; only “out of Christian charity” (Luther), it was to be put in the hands of the sovereign as praecipuum membrum ecclesiae (Melanchthon), but not by virtue of his temporal authority. Therefore Luther was not the progenitor of the princes’…